In Memoriam
by Les Larmes de le Soleil
Summary: Merlin has been waiting through all the long years for the Once and Future King to return; he has lived with loneliness since the day of Arthur's death. And yet, as always, there is hope...


The year was 2011.

He sat at his old desk, the sounds of a thousand cars and trucks echoing through his ears, but leaving no impression whatsoever on his mind. Photograph after photograph was arrayed before him; fading images taken more than eighty years ago (when he had taken up collecting cameras as a hobby), slightly blurred snaps from the seventies, and some taken that past year, which called to mind a tiny mirror rather than a photograph, so clear was every detail. The same face appeared in most of the photographs; that of a young man wearing a coat, which was either blue or red in the colored photographs. About his throat, there was a frayed neckerchief; only in one picture was he represented without it, in a photo taken of Harvard's class of 1955.

In each one of the pictures, Emrys saw himself represented as a youth, one who hardly knew what it was to have a care in the world. Briefly, he thought back to the time when life had been never-ending servitude, and every day, a hardship; but those years had ended with the death of his dearest friend. He had never been able to count the summers since that day; not after the hundredth anniversary of the death, at the least. The invention of the camera-that had helped him keep track of the years.

Remembering his brief soujourn in the United States, he thought of Evan Ryce, one of Harvard's class of 1975. He had looked so like the friend Emrys had lost; the same hair and eyes, the same blustering exterior, the same kind heart. Part of Emrys had hoped that he was the master who had died, but the rest of him knew it could not be. Britain-or what was it called now? The United Kingdom of Great Britian and Northern Ireland? The name amused him slightly, for he had spent most of his life calling it Albion, Britain, and, briefly, Saxony. Whatever name it went by, Albion's hour of need had not yet come.

* * *

The cool morning air whipped past his cheeks, which were red from his daily walk. Every morning, shortly before sunrise, Emrys would leave his house and walk twice around the lake which held so many memories. It had been where he had laid his first and only love, Freya, to rest, watched her burn to ashes along with her funeral boat.

As the years had slipped past, after his friend's death and the passing of the Queen, he had realized that none who lived recalled his true name. Through the millennia that followed, he had gone by the Druidic name Emrys, wishing his own name to be forgotten, become a name of legend. Indeed, it had; yet he had not looked at the new fangled tales once before scoffing. They were so pitifully inaccurate; especially the details of his age. The only one that had gotten his age right was the TV series which had been so woefully exaggerated; however, it had been amusing, and Emrys had laughed for hours...

The legends had not been entirely wrong, however. They all ended with the adage, "The King would rise again..." Then again, the Sidhe had told Emrys that on the day the king died.

On that particular morning, he was to give a speech at Oxford University, to its graduating class. He had spent a few hundred years living in the area, back when it had been called Hedena's Dune, ruled by Ethelred the Unready of Mercia. Why had he gone to Mercia? It was as if the numerous sieges Mercia had placed upon his home city had left no memory...

Emrys took off his jacket and went upstairs to get ready for his speech.

* * *

"...and I wish you all the best of your luck with all your future endeavours," finished Emrys, stepping down from the podium.

Amid the applause, he returned to his seat as the class speaker was mounting the steps to the stage. Emrys studied the boy, who was slight and black-haired, and clearly slightly nervous. However, once he stepped up to the microphone, all traces of anxiety melted away, and Emrys found himself captivated by the speech.

Then, he met the young man's eyes. They were a clear gray-blue, like the sky after rain. They held a look that Emrys had seen countless times before, and were no longer looking at all the members of the assembly in turn. They were fixed intently upon Emrys, who was staring just as unblinkingly back. The boy's eyes had been first filled with doubt, with utter astonishment, and then with a pure, unmixed relief.

Two words were then spoken simultaneously.

"Arthur!"

"Merlin!"


End file.
